Severed Souls

But Samantha respected Kahlan and did her best to hide her feelings, thinking that she did a good enough job of it that no one knew. Samantha undoubtedly realized that it was inappropriate and that nothing could come of it. Still, the heart wants what the heart wants and such feelings aren’t so easy to turn aside.

Kahlan believed that the young woman was smart enough not to let herself get carried away and hurt, even if at times, when she didn’t think anyone was looking, she did stare at Richard with unmistakable longing. Kahlan knew that it was best to let it die out on its own rather than say something and embarrass Samantha. Young women were easily humiliated in such matters, and Kahlan didn’t want to hurt her. She liked Samantha. She just wished that Richard weren’t the object of her desire.

Richard, of course, was oblivious of it. With so many more things to worry about, his mind was focused elsewhere and Kahlan was not about to bring it up. She, too, had enough things that were a great deal more serious to worry about.

Kahlan was taken by surprise when Irena abruptly left her daughter and rushed past the rest of them to grab Richard’s arm.

“Richard, you must come away from this man.” Irena tugged on his arm. “Leave these men to tend to it and come back with me. Come away right now.”

Richard stood his ground and frowned down at the woman. “What?”

She leaned in close and turned her face away from the prisoner so he couldn’t hear as she whispered, “He has occult powers. I must get you back away from him. Come with me.”

Nicci immediately forced her way between them, breaking Irena’s grip on Richard’s arm. With a look from Richard, Nicci understood the instruction and towed Irena by her wrist back out of the way.

“Can you sense if the half person has occult powers?” Kahlan whispered to Nicci as she fell in beside her to escort Irena back away from Richard.

Nicci looked over out of the corner of her eye. “No. I could sense the gift in him if he had it, but he doesn’t. I can’t sense any other type of power in a person, occult or otherwise. Occult magic is an entirely different form of power. I suspect that you can only sense it if you possess it yourself, and while I may know a little about it, I don’t have any occult abilities so I can’t sense them.”

“He has occult powers,” Irena insisted. It was all too clear that she resented having been dragged away from what she had been doing. She was the authority figure in her village and was apparently used to people deferring to her. She obviously didn’t appreciate having her word questioned or challenged.

“What are you talking about, he has occult powers?” Nicci growled through gritted teeth. “I am a sorceress with a great deal of experience.” She seized Irena’s arm and hauled her close. “If I can’t sense any occult powers in the man, then how can you?”

Fuming, Irena yanked her arm away from Nicci’s grip. Her expression had grown as dark as her mass of black hair.

“You don’t need to be a sorceress or have occult powers to know that the man has such ability and that he is dangerous.” She thrust out an arm, pointing back the way they had come. “Didn’t you see some of those unholy demons during the battle when they brought the dead back to life?”

“What of it?” Nicci asked.

Irena leaned in closer. “The Shun-tuk didn’t do such things by wishing the dead back to life, now did they? The gift can’t do such things. They couldn’t do such things without being able to wield occult sorcery. That’s how I know he has such powers.

“It’s dangerous for Richard to be near such a person. Richard’s gift isn’t working. He is naked before such dangerous occult abilities. He could be hurt or killed before any of us could do anything to protect him.”

“She’s right,” Kahlan whispered.

Nicci pressed her lips tight as she glanced over at Kahlan. “Only some of them—not all—have such powers. This one has shown no indication that he has occult powers.”

She finally gritted her teeth and turned back to Irena. “We don’t know that this man is one of the Shun-tuk with those abilities. My gift works just fine. I am Richard’s protection.

“Lord Rahl has a job to do. You let him do it. As the Lord Rahl he is doing what he has to do. He knows the dangers. You stay out of his way, understand?”

Irena looked shaken at being challenged. Before she could argue, Nicci grabbed the skirts of her black dress in both fists and rushed back to stand with Zedd, close behind Richard, where she could keep a close eye on the prisoner. Samantha wrung her hands, distraught at seeing her mother scolded. Zedd had been watching, too, but looked like he knew better than to get in the middle of quarreling sorceresses.

Kahlan joined Nicci at her side but didn’t say anything. She knew Nicci’s power was formidable, and if the knife the soldier was holding to the man’s throat and the arrows pointed at his chest didn’t stop him from harming Richard, Nicci surely would, even if she had to use her bare hands.

Kahlan hoped that Nicci really could stop him if she had to. She gripped the handle of the knife at her waist, making sure it was there if she needed it. She wished Cara were still with them. The Mord-Sith had always been Richard’s protector, but now she was gone.

Kahlan’s heart ached for Cara, for her loss. She could understand why she had left, but she missed her.

Kahlan couldn’t imagine how she would feel if she lost Richard, or what she would do. Just imagining such a terrifying thing quickened her heart rate. Unfortunately, with the sickness afflicting them both, it was a thought that always haunted her and she couldn’t entirely banish.

Richard looked back over his shoulder. “Everything all right?”

Nicci leaned closer to Richard and whispered so that he, but not the prisoner, could hear. “Be careful, Richard. We don’t know what abilities this man might have. He could be a risk to you without him even having to touch you.”

Richard rubbed his fingertips on his forehead as he shared a look over his shoulder with them. Kahlan could see by the reaction in his eyes, or rather, the lack of reaction, that he was already well aware of that danger.

“I understand. But we’re running out of time. I have to find out what I can.”

Kahlan understood what he meant. Death was coming for the two of them, and it was getting closer by the moment.

Nicci gave him a nod and he turned back to the prisoner.

CHAPTER 13

What’s your name?” Richard asked the man on his knees.

The Shun-tuk glared without answering.

“Do you even have a name? Do any of your people use names?”

The man maintained his silent glare.

Richard clasped his hands as he looked down at the prisoner. “No name, no soul.”

“We will have souls,” the man said in a low growl filled with hate. Richard had touched a nerve. “We will have all of your souls for ourselves. They will be ours.”

“It’s foolish to even imagine you can get a soul by eating the flesh of people who have them. There is only one way to get a soul.”

The man’s brow twitched with the slightest bit of interest, but he would not ask.

“You can only get a soul,” Richard finally said in answer to the unspoken question, “by being born with one. It is forged into a person at their creation. It’s an inherent part of them, a living connection to everything in this world and the next as shown in the lines of the Grace. It’s their link to existence.

“Good or bad, kind or cruel, for better or worse, whether they want it or not, the soul they were born with is theirs from the instant of the ignition of that spark at their creation, through life, and on into the world of the dead. In the most basic sense, it is the sum of who they are, the distillation of everything they are. They can neither give it away or lose it or have it stolen from them. That soul is a part of them and can’t be separated from them, either willingly or unwillingly.”

The man smiled. “If that were true, then how do you explain the existence of the half people?”

“You were born without souls.”

“Not in the beginning. In the beginning the half people started life as you did, as people born with souls. Their souls were ripped out of them to create weapons, to create the half people—those without souls.”

“Yes, but that was done thousands of years ago by Emperor Sulachan and his wizards, wizards who had powers none of us today have or can fully envision.”

“But they did it. They took souls from people who had them.”

Richard gestured to the south, toward the Old World, where Sulachan had originally ruled. “Sulachan’s violation of the nature of life was depraved. It was not a simple plucking of soul from someone. It entailed great effort of many wizards with long-lost powers and dedicated to Sulachan’s perverted task.

“None of those original half people could give their offspring a soul because they no longer had one. They had lost their connection to the Grace. Their offspring were born without a soul and can only bear offspring of their own without a soul.

“The only soul those original half people could ever have would have been their own, if Sulachan were to somehow reunite them. But those people are long dead and gone. Their descendants, like you, can’t ever gain a soul by any means because none ever belonged to you.”

“As those with souls die,” the man said with confidence, “that soul flees the body as it begins its journey to the world of the dead. After all, the bodies that rot in the ground no longer have souls. Their souls left them. So, souls can flee the body of their host.”

“That part of them that is their soul leaves them at death to go through the veil as the Grace shows,” Richard said.

“And we can capture the soul by eating the living flesh that the soul is still bound into. If we consume the living, then at just the right instant, while their soul still resides in their flesh and blood, as they die we will have that warm flesh and blood inside us at the exact instant the soul departs the dying flesh of that host. Since we are living that soul that is within us will bind to us. It will have found a new, living host and we will then possess that soul.”

Kahlan shared a troubled look with Zedd. It was about as sick a belief as she had ever heard.

Richard was shaking his head. “No, you can’t. You can’t, because that soul, that essence of who the person is, that spark they were born with, doesn’t wander around looking for a new ‘host,’ as you put it. That isn’t at all what happens. When that person dies, their soul, being part of the continuation of the gift, follows the lines coming from the spark of creation and passes through the veil into the underworld.”

“Not if we capture it first as they are dying.”

Richard watched the man without showing any emotion to the revolting idea. “It doesn’t work that way. Someone else’s soul—who they are—can’t reside in you. It can’t be trapped or take up residence in someone new. At death it is bound to the underworld.”

“We will have your souls for ourselves,” the man said with the confidence that only unshakable, irrational faith could provide.

While Kahlan wasn’t entirely sure of what, exactly, constituted the soul, she knew enough to know that in these people wishing took the place of reason. It wasn’t possible to reason with people who were irrational. That was what made irrational people so profoundly dangerous.

The half people had dreamed up an entire belief system around what they imagined a soul was, how it behaved, and how they could get one for themselves. They invented the entire belief system out of wishes. They wished it to work that way, and so they believed it must, simply because they wanted it to.

In a way, they didn’t have the ability to listen to reason because they weren’t human in the conventional sense. They looked more or less like normal people, but they weren’t. They were a different kind of human. In some ways, without a soul, they had more in common with animals than people, with little more than the reasoning ability of a predator.

They were hungry, they hunted. They hungered for a soul, they hunted them. It was action based on need alone.

Richard stared at the man for a long moment before speaking. “And do you know any of your kind who have ever gained a soul by capturing it from a person they ate? Has it ever worked even once? Have you ever seen it actually succeed?”

He hesitated a moment. “I have not seen it yet, myself.” His chin lifted a little, but not enough that Commander Fister’s knife cut his throat. “If I had, I would have fallen on the man who accomplished it and I would have eaten him in turn to get that soul for myself. I need one for myself. I am entitled to a soul.”

“Who sent you?” Richard asked, abruptly changing the subject from the dead end of blind belief.

The man’s chest puffed up with pride. “Our king and emperor, Sulachan. He came back from the world of the dead. His soul returned. You are the bringer of the dead. Your blood brought him back. I was there. I saw it happen with my own eyes.

“If I do not first gain a soul for myself, our king will help us to be complete.”

Richard folded his arms over his chest. “And how do you think he can do such a thing? How can he make you complete?”

“He is a spirit king,” the man said, as if that said it all. When Richard only stared, he went on. “He can bridge worlds. He has proven that by returning from the dead. Now that his spirit has returned to the world of life, bridging the veil, he will bring the worlds together and unite them. The world of life and death will be together in one world—no longer separated by the veil. I will be complete when he does.”

“How is that going to make you complete?”

“In life, you must have a soul to be complete. When life ends the soul continues on through the veil into the world of the dead.”

He fell silent again, again seeming to think that should explain it all. Richard frowned in realization.

“I see your problem. The way things are now, after you die you can’t go on to the world of the dead because you have no soul to go there, no soul to make that journey. Without a soul, there is no underworld for you, no going beyond the veil to the eternity beyond. Without a soul, when you die you will simply cease to exist.”

The man stared off for a moment before answering. “That is why I must have a soul. Those with souls were born lucky. We are entitled to have a soul.”

“So you think you are justified in killing people because you want their soul for yourself?”

“Of course. We need a soul, so we must kill to get one.”

Kahlan was right. These half people were less than human. Without a soul they had no empathy for others. They didn’t feel for their victims, or feel any guilt at killing. Without a soul they couldn’t. They were predators, remorseless killers after prey. They felt no empathy for that prey, any more than a wolf felt sorry for deer it took down. It was simply prey.

She understood now that there was a larger purpose than she had thought behind the depraved desire to steal a soul. It wasn’t merely a blind hunger for a soul to fill a void within themselves. It was a hunger to have a soul in order to do what humans could do—go on to the underworld after death.

Having no soul denied them the eternity of the underworld. The world of life was a brief spark in time compared to an eternity in the underworld. They were desperate to escape the fate of ceasing to exist at death. They invented a belief they thought would allow them to live on in the underworld, basking in the warm light of Creation. In a very real way, these people worshiped death because it seemed like a better world to them, a world without end. Theirs was, in a way, a religious quest.

Without a soul, they couldn’t do any of that. Without a soul, death meant they would go out of existence like a candle flame being snuffed out. For the half people, having no soul meant that there could be no eternity among the good spirits. To the half people, having a soul meant gaining immortality.

In a way, she felt a twinge of sorrow for them, except that they were willing to kill to get what they wanted.

Kahlan knew that Richard didn’t want her asking anything because it would draw the man’s attention to her, but she couldn’t help herself.

“Sulachan can’t give you a soul,” she said, “and without that spark of the gift within you, he can’t take you to the underworld. You are bound to this world, but only for as long as you live. There is nothing there within you for him to take to his realm after you die. He can do nothing to help you after you die. So why would you follow him? What is it you think he can do for you?”

His dark eyes fixed on her. “Once our king unites the world of life and the world of the dead, there will be no need for a soul. Death will no longer be an end for us.

“Once you die, your soul goes to the world of the dead. In that way you are able to bridge both worlds. Without a soul we cannot go on to the world of the dead.

“But once the worlds are united into one, both worlds will be one, together, not separate. We will already be in the world of the dead as well as the world of life. All those like me will be able to exist in a single world of life and death bound together. It will be all parts of the Grace in one united world without end.

“Our king has promised that in such a world, once life and death exist together, I will be complete and have no need of a soul in order to go on to the underworld. I will already be there without needing a soul to make that journey, to cross over. There will be nothing to cross over to. We will be there.

“Once the world of life and death are brought together into a third kingdom, a kingdom of both life and death in the same place at the same time, Sulachan will rule over it all for all time in the eternity of that world brought together into one.”

It was a profoundly disturbing concept. The very fact that after three thousand years Sulachan had returned from the world of the dead showed that the idea made a perverse kind of sense, at least to Sulachan and the half people.

Kahlan didn’t believe that it could actually work, but she knew that they did.

It was troubling that it had been Richard’s blood that had enabled the occult conjuring to work and bring Sulachan’s spirit back from the dead.

But most troubling of all was that with such powers as Sulachan possessed, the very attempt to make such a delusional scheme work could very well destroy the world of life.

In that sense, there would be only one world.

An eternally dead one.

CHAPTER 14

How did you find us?” Richard asked, changing the subject again.

For the first time a sly smile came to the man. “We tracked you.”

“How did you track us?”

By his tone of voice, Kahlan didn’t think these people read footprints on the ground. Apparently Richard didn’t either.

The man’s smile turned murderous. “Some of us have … talents.”

Zedd frowned, no longer able to contain himself. “Talents? What sort of talents?”

The man’s eyes turned up to the old wizard. “Some of us are spirit trackers. It is an ancient ability passed down to us from the first half people that Emperor Sulachan created. Now that he has returned, he has use of us. He sent us to track you.”

Richard paced as he thought about the unusual claim. “You expect me to believe that you can track people by sensing their spirits?”

“I do not expect you to believe anything,” the Shun-tuk prisoner said. “You asked, I told you. We are spirit trackers. It does not matter to me what you believe.”

“So you’re saying that some of you can track spirits,” Richard asked, “that some of you have that ability to sense them and follow them?”

“The Shun-tuk are not all the same. Some of our ancestors were created with abilities forged into them. Among the Shun-tuk there is a variety of abilities.”

“Abilities,” Richard repeated in a flat tone.

Kahlan knew that such abilities created out of people were all too real. After all, she was a Confessor, an ability that had been created in the first Confessor, Magda Searus. That ability had been passed down to all the offspring of Confessors.

“Some of us were born with different abilities than others among us, just as some of you are gifted, while others of you are not.

“Spirit trackers can sense the presence of souls. Because we can sense souls, we can track them, much like a wolf can smell his prey and follow its scent. And like a wolf following a scent of a particular animal, we can distinguish between spirits. We can sense individual spirits and follow their essence. Once we found you, we did as we were commanded.”

“Not exactly. You failed,” Richard pointed out. “You failed even to kill the one man you had down and by himself. How does your spirit king treat those who fail him?”

“We did not fail. We tracked your spirits as instructed.”

“Tracking us would only be part of your orders. I’m sure you were instructed to kill us or bring captives back, much as you captured all these people here once before and brought them to Sulachan.

“This time, you failed. You didn’t kill any of us, steal any souls for yourselves, and you don’t have any captives to take back to Sulachan. Knowing how he treats those who fail him, I would say that you are fortunate you will never see Emperor Sulachan again.”

The man lifted his chin indignantly. “I will see him soon enough. When the world of the dead is brought together with the world of the living, I will be with my king again. In the meantime, the spirit trackers have not yet failed. We found you. We will continue coming after you until we succeed. We can fail many times and still keep coming. You can fail only once, and then we have you.

“Sooner or later you will be ours. We will have the souls of those with you, and bring you back so that Lord Arc can send you to the world of the dead with his own hands.”

“Lord Arc.” Richard frowned. “So you were instructed to bring only me back with you?”

“That’s right, our king sent us at the request of Lord Arc. But he sent us to bring back only you, for Lord Arc.”

“So you are not to bring back any other captives?”

The man looked over at Kahlan with lust in his dark eyes. “No. Just you. The rest he no longer needs. The rest we can eat. We can have their souls for ourselves.”

He smiled up to Richard. “Your soul belongs to my king and Lord Arc to do with as they will. That is their business, not ours. Our trackers are free to do what they will with the rest of your people.”

“And where are your spirit king and Hannis Arc? Where were you to bring me?”

The man’s brow lifted with a dismissive expression. “They head to the southeast.”

Kahlan didn’t like the sound of that. By the look Nicci and Zedd gave her, neither did the sorceress or wizard. The People’s Palace was to the southeast.

“Where are the rest of your trackers?” Richard asked. “When are they coming back to attack again?”

The man stared off without answering. It was obvious enough, now, that they would return, and keep returning. Kahlan knew that the only way to stop them was to kill every last one of them.

“It seems to me that it is in your best interest to cooperate in order to stay alive, since if you die without a soul you will not be around for the time when your king unites the world of the dead and the living.”

The Shun-tuk frowned. “What do you mean?”

“The longer you cooperate, the longer you live. Who knows, you might live long enough to see the worlds united.

“But if you don’t cooperate, then you are of no further use to us. Why would we want to keep you around, take you with us, watch over you? Like a wolf in our midst, your existence will have to be extinguished. Then there will be nothing left of you, no spirit, no spark of anything to live on in the united world of the third kingdom. For now, death is the final end for you.”